
F-]iP 



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PRESENTED BY 




PETERSHAM MEMORIAL LIBRARY 



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<®ne ^tmbreb anii Jf tfttetf) 
Hmtttoertfarp 



OF THE INCORPORATION 
OF THE 



Town of Petersham 

MASSACHUSETTS 




Wednesday, August the Tenth 
1904 



F74- 









Printed by The Everett Press Company, Boston 



COMMITTEE 



*EDWIN C. DEXTER, Chairman 
CLARENCE S. FISKE, Secretary 

George Ayres Francis H. Lee 

James W. Brooks William Simes 

Frederick Bryant Benjamin W. Spooner 

Charles S. Coolidge William W. Stewart 

Charles A. Fobes Charles S. Waldo 

Allen French Charles K. Wilder 

Merrick E. Hildreth Robert W. Willson 

BENJAMIN W. SPOONER, Marshal 



*Mr. Dexter, to whose judgment, energy, and tact the successful ar- 
rangements for the celebration were largely due, is the present owner of the 
farm on which the rebel Shay is said to have been overtaken by General 
Lincoln (see page 34). The old house has disappeared, but an old-fashioned 
sweep overhangs the well which was under the L of the house. The farm 
was for many years, and until his death, owned and occupied by the late 
Deacon Cephas Willard, referred to on page 39. 



[3] 



PROGRAM 



MORNING 



The procession, planned for the morning, had to be dispensed with 
on account of the weather. 

At Ten O'Clock 

Music. The Salem Cadet Band. 

Prayer. Rev. Alfred W. Birks. 

Introductory Remarks. Mr. William Simes, Chairman of the 
Meeting. 

Address. Mr. James W. Brooks, President of the Day. 

Poem. Mr. Francis Z. Stone. 

Singing. "America." By the Public-School Children and 
Audience. 

Benediction. Rev. Preston R. Crowell. 

AFTERNOON 
At Two O'Clock: 
Music. The Salem Cadet Band. 

ADDBESSES BY 

His Excellency, John L. Bates, Governor of Massachusetts. 

Hon. Frederick H. Gillett, M. C, of Springfield. 

Hon. James J. Myers, of Cambridge. 

Hon. Stephen Salisbury, of Worcester. 

Mr. J. Harding Allen, of Barre. 

Rev. Alvin F. Bailey, of Barre. 

Mr. Henry S. Bennett, of New York. 

Mr. Abiathar Blanchard, of South Norwalk, Conn. 

Rev. Francis E. Tower, D.D., of Poughkeepsie, N. Y. 

Mr. George W. Horr, of Athol. 

AND OTHERS. 

Singing. "Old Hundred." 

[4] 



NOTE 



THE township of Petersham was granted, under the 
name of Niche waug, in 1733, and incorporated, un- 
der its present name, in 1754. It celebrated the cen- 
tennial anniversary of its incorporation on July 4, 1854, and 
the sesquicentennial on August 10, 1904. Its people made 
generous preparation for this occasion, in which they were 
very deeply interested. A large tent, for accommodation of 
the many who were present, was spread over the lawn in the 
rear of the Memorial Library. The celebrated Salem Cadet 
Band discoursed delightful music. Ample arrangement was 
made for refreshment of the inner man and beast, and at- 
tractive fireworks were provided to prolong the celebration 
into the evening. 

Among the guests in attendance were the distinguished 
gentlemen whose names appear upon the order of exercises, 
and whose interesting and eloquent addresses — referring 
to the exceptional beauty of Petersham, to its happy relation- 
ship to its neighboring towns, to the prominence of its early 
settlers and the noteworthy part they played in the early his- 
tory of the Commonwealth; to the State, her illustrious men, 
her institutions, industries, and schools, her world-wide fame 
in every department of human activity, and her high rank in 
the great sisterhood of the Republic; and to America's fore- 
most place among the nations of the world — were heard with 
rapt attention and received the intelligent and grateful appre- 
ciation of a crowded and enthusiastic audience. 

The following letter from the late Senator Hoar had led 
the committee to hope for the honor of his presence: 



[5 



Worcester, June 14, 1904. 
Dear Mr. Brooks: 

I should like very much to visit Petersham at the time of your 
celebration. But I have been directed by my doctors to make no 
engagements which will involve any speaking in public for more 
than five minutes for some months to come. And I cannot now tell 
where I shall be on the tenth of August. Perhaps you will permit 
me to reserve my reply, therefore, until the time approaches. 

I have very pleasant recollections of Petersham. I had many 
strong friends and clients there, including the town itself. 

I am, with high regard, faithfully yours, 

Geo. F. Hoar. 

Unhappily, as the day of celebration approached, it be- 
came evident that the illustrious man's last word in public 
had already been spoken. 

The day was unfortunate. A pouring rain — well calcu- 
lated to revive the waning faith in the Noachian deluge — 
sadly interfered with the day's proceedings and deprived the 
people of much of the pleasure the town had hoped to afford 
them. They proved, however, to have inherited the pluck 
and hardihood of their ancestors and bore their misfortunes 
— and even the morning address — with the heroism that 
characterized the earlier New England "days that tried 
men's souls." J. W. B. 



[6] 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS BY MR. SIMES: 

Citizens, Friends, and Lovers of Petersham: — 

WHEN our fathers came into the wilderness, almost 
before they sowed the seed for the harvest they 
built with devoted hands their church. The first 
church of Petersham, the Town Church, stood at the south 
end of the Common, on the east side. In those days every one 
went to church, and soon the little building became too small 
and a new and larger one was built about where the flagstaff 
now stands. In the belfry of this church was placed a bell cast 
by Paul Revere. They continued to go to church, and in 1842, 
about the time of the town's greatest prosperity, the present 
church was built on the west side of the Common and Paul 
Revere 's bell found a new resting-place. For over one hun- 
dred years it has sounded through the clear air of our hills 
its call to worship, its summons to the grave, its notes of joy, 
its notes of sorrow. It has called us here to-day, and its note 
has been a joyful one. I will ask the Rev. Alfred Birks, the 
pastor of the First Church, to invoke the divine blessing. 

AFTER THE PRAYER, MR. SIMES CONTINUED AS FOLLOWS: 

The story is told that in a Chinese city a native was asked 
where he lived. He replied, naming a small village many 
miles away. His questioner said, " But you do not live there 
now." "No," replied the Chinaman, "but the old root is in 
that village." Nineteen centuries before, his family had moved 
away, but in their hearts, for those nineteen centuries, had the 
root been kept alive. We know to-day what the Chinaman 
felt ; for deep down in the heart, among its sacred things, lies 
the love for our birthplace, the love for the home of our 

[7] 



fathers. Distance does not weaken it; it grows stronger as 
we grow older. 

We are met to-day to celebrate the one hundred and fiftieth 
anniversary of the incorporation of the town of Petersham. 
In 1733 or 1734 the first settlers came into this then unbroken 
forest. In 1754 the infant settlement petitioned the General 
Court to be incorporated and was christened Petersham. 

To you whose roots go down to the earlier days of Peters- 
ham, whose ancestors lie under the quaint stones of its silent 
graveyards, to you who here first saw the light of day, the oc- 
casion is of the deepest interest. 

But if in a less degree, yet still in full measure, is it a joy- 
ful one to those who, like myself, have come from without its 
borders to find its soil an easy one to take root in. 

To you, our neighbors, who are bound to us by so many 
ties of kindred, by so many associations both of war and 
peace, who have always rejoiced when we have rejoiced, we 
bid a hearty welcome. 

Especially do we welcome the distinguished guests who 
have honored us with their presence. To-day we claim you 
all as citizens of Petersham. 

In these times when we spell the United States with very 
large letters, may it not be that the story of our old Massa- 
chusetts town teaches more than a local lesson ? For the 
story of Petersham is the story of Massachusetts ; the story of 
Massachusetts is the story of the influences that have made 
our nation great, and by which it must ever be guided if it is 
to remain great. It is the story of the industry, courage, and 
fortitude that conquered the wilderness ; of the love of educa- 
tion that placed the schoolhouse by the side of the church; 
of the love of liberty that gave to Massachusetts Samuel Ad- 
ams and Samuel Hoar and Charles Sumner, and to Peters- 
ham Jonathan Grout, Col. Ephraim Doolittle, Capt. Park 
Holland, Capt. Wing Spooner, Capt. Ivory Holland, Capt. 
Asa Howe, Capt. John Wheeler, and Capt. John Mudge, and 
the glorious list of soldiers of the wars of the Revolution and 
Rebellion inscribed upon the tablets of its Memorial Building. 

[8] 



It has never been questioned who shall tell our story. But 
one name has been thought of. He is the nephew of him who 
fifty years ago, told the story, and whose saintly face and 
charming presence are among our pleasantest memories. 
He was born of ancestors whose names are written upon 
every page of our town's history. He left Petersham in early 
manhood, but his roots held tenaciously to his native soil, 
and he returned to it to give freely of his time, his taste, and 
his means to make it a place worth living in, and to do a lov- 
ing work in preserving and revealing the beauties of its woods 
and streams. 

I have the pleasure of introducing to you the President of 
the day, Mr. James Willson Brooks, who will deliver the 
address. 

ADDRESS BY MR. BROOKS: 

IT is not definitely known how our township came by its 
name. In England, near London, is an interesting little 
parish called Petersham — the ham, or home, of St. Peter. 
So far as we know, ours is the only other ham, or home, of 
that name on the planet. 

Whether St. Peter really officiated, visibly or invisibly, at 
the birth or baptism of these places, or how far residence 
in either may improve one's chances at the gate of which he 
is said to hold the key, is not yet revealed to us. The thing 
certain is that, by some decree, celestial or terrestrial, our Pe- 
tersham is here, has been for one hundred and fifty years, 
and is our theme to-day. 

In the little time afforded us, we can note these many years 
only as one sees the country from the window of a railway 
train or regards the landscape from a hilltop. There can be no 
stopping at stations — hardly time to count the mile-stones 
along our way. Persons and things nearest and most inter- 
esting must be swept by or overlooked, and our attention 
mainly bestowed upon the more prominent objects and out- 
fines in the dimmer and more distant view. 

[9] 



What can be offered in response to the manifold interest 
that has brought you here to-day ? What can be said to our 
friends from the neighboring towns, whose kindly regard for 
us always brings congratulation for our happy days and sym- 
pathy for our days of trial ? What to the long absent who re- 
turn to find the old home painfully crowded with those no 
longer here ? What to those drawn hither by desire to see the 
former abode of some honored ancestor ? What to you who 
come wondering what the little old town can have left to say 
for itself ? And to you, veterans of the Civil War, comrades 
of our departed Captain Mudge, whose names, with those of 
our heroes of the Revolution, are on the tablets in Memorial 
Hall, and who, with many more of us, must too soon join 

"The innumerable caravan that moves 
To that mysterious realm where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of Death"? 

What grateful word of appreciation have we for our wor- 
thy chief magistrate, who, engrossed with the weightier in- 
terests of the larger towns of the Commonwealth, has not 
disdained a generous consideration for one of these little ones ? 
What shall we say to you, our summer friends, who come 
with the laurel, the caddy, and the bobolink to make our long- 
est days too short and few, and, with the first frost, put your 
houses in curl-papers and migrate with the other birds of 
passage ? And what to you, our good people here throughout 
the year, except what, in to-day's celebration, you are say- 
ing to yourselves and bidding me say to all, — although it 
goes without saying, — Here are our homes, our fields of labor, 
and our loved ones, and the homes of those who here have 
lived, labored, loved, and gone before us ? Here many of us 
had our first waking and are to lie down in our last sleep. 
Here rest our sainted dead. Here are our old meeting-houses, 
rich in hallowed association with friends and days that will 
return no more. Here are our playgrounds, alert with the 
life and ringing with the mirth of expanding youth, as the 
generations succeed one another and write their chapters in 

[10] 



the story of the town; and here are our everlasting, ever- 
changing, never-changing hills — dumb witnesses of events 
that have stirred and must ever stir to patriotic thought and 
deed — mute emblems of sublimity unutterable — silent mon- 
itors of the all-embracing might and mystery that ever invite 
and forever baffle all finite comprehension. 

Our records are few and dim and the tooth of Time is 
gnawing the once potent names from the stones where, 

"Each in his narrow cell forever laid, 
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep." 

We love the old town. We honor the men and the deeds 
that have wrought our inheritance, and we could not suffer 
the rounded period of one hundred and fifty years to steal 
into the shadows of the past without meeting with one another 
and asking our friends to join us in celebration of our fair 
fame and in the pious resolve that our bequests to the future 
shall not be altogether unworthy of our inheritance from the 
past. 

It is said that our intelligent and devoted friend, the dog, 
finds in the long way around the short way home. Let me 
imitate that faithful fellow creature so far as to approach our 
subject of Petersham by way of Maine and New Hampshire. 

In the town of Wakefield, in the latter State, near Lake 
Winnepiseogee, is a small sheet of water known as Love- 
well's Pond; and in Fryeburg, Maine — once a part of Massa- 
chusetts — the little town in which the great Daniel Webster 
once taught school and copied papers in the local registry of 
deeds, is another pond bearing the same name. In both cases 
the name was bestowed in honor of Captain John Lovewell, 
of Dunstable. From the border of the former, in February, 
1725, he brought away the scalps of ten Indians. On the 
border of the other, three months later, he laid down his life. 

Captain Lovewell, a sturdy and fearless man, was a famous 
fighter in our wars with the Indians, whose depredations, in 
the early part of the eighteenth century, had become so cruel 
and disastrous that our general court offered a bounty of 

[ii] 



,£100 for every Indian-man's scalp brought in. Captain Love- 
well, whether inspired by this bounty or by more patriotic 
motives or by both, gathered a band of resolute men to share 
with him the dangers and profits of Indian-hunting. In 
December, 1724, they captured a scalp and a living Indian 
near Lake Winnepiseogee, and received their reward. In 
February following they made another excursion to the same 
region. On the easterly side of the lake, on the twentieth of 
that month, they found a trail, and, just before sunset, de- 
scried smoke which indicated an Indian encampment. 

Careful to avoid discovery, using no fire for cooking their 
supper lest the smoke might betray them, muzzling their 
dogs to prevent barking, the next day, cautiously watching, 
they waited in silence for the dead of night. Then, stealthily 
creeping near and perceiving ten Indians asleep around their 
camp-fire, they fired upon them, instantly killing seven. Two 
of the remainder fell as they started from sleep, and the third 
and last, badly wounded and trying to escape, was seized by 
a dog and instantly killed. 

These Indians had with them shoes, moccasins, blankets, 
and other equipments provided for the use of captives they 
expected to take from some settlement of white men and drive 
or drag with them over the ice and snow to Canada. 

Thus, after a short absence, Lovewell and his band re- 
turned to Boston with ten scalps, and received, in addition 
to their daily pay of two shillings and sixpence, a thousand 
pounds of prize money. 

This exploit, on the border of the little sheet of water in 
Wakefield, gave to it the name of Lovewell's Pond. 

Having settled the affairs of this expedition, Lovewell im- 
mediately recruited a company for another campaign, and, 
on April 15, 1725, wrote as follows to the governor: 

Sir, — This is to inform you that I marched from Dunstable with 
between 40 and 50 men on the day above mentioned, and I should 
have marched sooner if the weather had not prevented me. No more 
at present, but I remain your humble servant. John Lovell. 

[12] 



He wrote no more then — and, so far as we know, no more 
ever. 

Of this expedition we learn from a sermon preached by 
Thomas Symmes, at Bradford, not long after, that Love- 
well, starting with forty-six men, travelled a little way when 
one, falling lame, had to return. Later another, disabled, 
had to be dismissed with a kinsman to accompany him. Again, 
another falling ill, the captain halted, built a fort, and left 
his doctor, a sergeant, and several others to care for the sick 
man. With his company thus reduced to thirty-four men, he 
then travelled on forty miles to Pequawket, now Fryeburg, 
Maine. On Saturday, May 8, 1725, while at prayers very 
early in the morning, they heard a gun and saw an Indian. 
Perceiving that the enemy desired to draw them on, they de- 
bated whether to fight or retreat, when the men in general 
said, "We came out to meet the enemy, we have all along 
prayed God we might meet 'em, and we had rather trust our 
lives to Providence than return without seeing them and be 
called cowards for our pains." 

Lovewell led them on, to find they were ambushed and 
greatly outnumbered, but they fought desperately from 
morning to night. About the middle of the afternoon Jon- 
athan Frye, for whom Fryeburg was named, a young man 
of liberal education, chaplain of the company, who had fought 
with undaunted courage, was mortally wounded, and, when 
unable longer to fight, was heard praying for his comrades. 
After sunset the enemy withdrew, Lovewell and many of his 
men dead, and nearly all the others wounded. In the night 
the scattered men got together. One, unable to proceed, said, 
" Load my gun and leave it with me, for the Indians will come 
in the morning for my scalp, and I '11 kill one more if I can." 

Another, having fallen from loss of blood, crawled up to 
one of the ensigns in the heat of battle and said, " I 'm a 
dead man, but, if possible, I '11 get out of the way and save 
my scalp." 

Another, left behind, said to a departing comrade, " I shall 

[13] 



rise no more. Go to my father and tell him I expect in a few 
hours to be in eternity and am not afraid to die." 

Once, during the fight, the Indians asked if the whites 
would take quarter. " Only at the muzzles of the guns" was 
the answer. The preacher, in closing, says, " I have only to 
add that, whoever considers the distance our people were at 
from any white settlement, in the howling wilderness and 
very far in the country of the enemy, who were at home and 
more than double our number, how they fought from morn- 
ing till night without any refreshment, and the number killed 
and wounded, will doubtless grant that this action merits 
room in the history of our new English wars whenever a 
continuance of it shall be published." 

This forlorn fight with the Pequawket Indians, in which, 
though a drawn battle, their chief was slain and they were 
driven to Canada, gave once more the name of Lovewell to 
a little pond on the border of which it occurred. On the shore 
of this pond, in Fryeburg, Maine, on the 17th of June of this 
the year of our one hundred and fiftieth anniversary, the So- 
ciety of Colonial Wars unveiled a rough field-stone bearing 
a bronze tablet to the memory of Captain Lovewell and the 
men who there died with him. 

Why these details ? Partly because of our general inter- 
est in the exploits of the daring men who had to clear our 
primeval forests of savages before they could clear them for 
peaceful settlement, partly because it is pleasant to note that 
societies and individuals are increasingly interested in pre- 
serving the records and honoring the memories of those who 
have bravely wrought in any field for the welfare of their fel- 
low men, and partly because these narratives take us back 
to and reanimate the men and times to which they relate, 
show us their environment, and tell us the story of those 
fearless, fighting, scalping, praying, preaching ancestors of 
ours, and teach us something of their character, spirit, faith, 
and courage, and of what they had to dare, do, and endure to 
prepare the way for us, their more fortunate descendants. 
But the principal reason is that, six years after this fight with 

[14] 



the Pequawket Indians, John Bennett, Jeremiah Perley, and 
some threescore more, from Dunstable, Lancaster, Groton, 
Concord, Worcester, and other places, who had fought under 
Captain Lovewell and were with him when the ten scalps 
were taken by the pond in New Hampshire, and who, in 
earlier campaigns in search of Indians, had scouted with him 
over these hills of ours and thus discovered their beauty and 
fertility and conceived a desire to make their homes among 
them, in the spring of 1731, the year before George Wash- 
ington was born, petitioned the governor, Council, and the 
Great and General Court of His Majesty's Province of the 
Massachusetts Bay for the grant of this township, which they 
asked for and, two years later, obtained in consideration of 
hardships endured, dangers incurred, and services rendered 
under the leadership of Captain John Lovewell, of Dunsta- 
ble, and Captain John White, of Lancaster, in their warfare 
with the Indians. 

These, then, were the men to whom we trace our local be- 
ginning. Si monumentum queris, circumspicel If you seek 
the monument unveiled to them here, look about you. You 
will not find their names on the tablets of our Memorial Hall 
among those of the later patriots who have rendered us sig- 
nal service, but you can well afford them a grateful place on 
the tablets of your memories. 

Look back for a moment to this first period of our history. 
No town in this vicinity was then in existence. There was no 
Petersham, Athol, Phillipston, Barre, Dana, or New Salem; 
no Worcester County, no State of Massachusetts, and no 
United States of America. There was no settlement nearer 
than Rutland, Brookfield, Deerfield, and Lancaster, and these 
were aflame and bleeding in their deadly conflict with the 
Indians. There was no road over our hills and no bridge 
across our streams. No mill here had ever ground a bushel 
of corn or sawed a log or helped to full a yard of homespun. 
No wheel had ever left a track upon our soil, and no stone 
had found a place in the many miles of moss-grown boundary- 
walls that mark the toil and ownership of our living and dead. 

[15] 



There was here no hearthstone, no horse, ox, cow, sheep, 
nor domestic fowl. The whole region was still an unbroken 
wilderness, the abode of rattlesnakes, wolves, bears, wild- 
cats, and wilder men. But the hour had struck for a change 
of scene. The descendants and followers of the Pilgrims, 
aflame with the love of civil and religious liberty — for them- 
selves, if not for the Indians — and resolute with the energies, 
convictions, and courage which had brought them over seas 
or through the struggles and trials that equip for high achieve- 
ment, were rapidly increasing in number and crowding back 
from the seacoast, up the navigable waters of the rivers and 
across the intervening hills and valleys, in that restless, on- 
ward movement which has overspread the continent and has 
not been stayed by the waters of the Pacific ocean. 

The time had come for wild animals and wild men to dis- 
appear, for the streams to turn the wheels of the pioneer, for 
the forests to fall before his axe and be cleft into his abode, 
his meeting-house, his schoolhouse, and his storehouse; for 
his clearings to become seed-places for his harvests, pasture- 
grounds for his flocks and herds, and dwelling-places for him- 
self and his descendants. 

These lands were still a part of the kingdom of England. 
Our governor was a British governor and our people were 
British subjects; but Washington was in his cradle and Lib- 
erty was in hers, and great questions were stirring great men 
to great deeds and great chapters in human history. 

Work — serious, unselfish, dangerous, and bloody work — 
was preparing for this hill, for Bunker Hill, for Bennington 
and Saratoga and many an elsewhere for this brave and sturdy 
pioneer who must back his faith and courage with his bay- 
onet and flintlock. 

Consider his first steps here. The township granted, John 
Bennet is authorized to convene the proprietors. Duly 
warned, they first meet at the inn of Thomas Carter, in Lan- 
caster, on May 10, 1733, choose their first moderator and 
clerk, vote a survey of the township and the laying out of a 
portion of it into lots of fifty acres each to be drawn for by 

[16] 



the proprietors, pass the orders and rules, and appoint the 
committees required for settlement of the plantation accord- 
ing to the terms and conditions of the grant, which were, in 
general, in all these towns, that a certain number of proprie- 
tors should be settled within a specified time, that a meeting- 
house should be built, a lot set apart for the first settled min- 
ister, a gospel minister installed, and due provision made for 
schools — religion and education planting themselves under 
the very foundation-stones of early New England. 

The march to the township begins. There are no roads 
and no vehicles. The settler packs upon his own back or the 
back of his horse his scanty clothing, provisions, and uten- 
sils, shoulders his axe and gun, and, scouting around Wachu- 
sett, clambering over the Hubbardston hills, fording Burnt- 
shirt River, and crossing Moccasin Brook and the little begin- 
nings of Swift River, comes to his allotted acres on these hills 
of ours — his food, wild game; his drink, the waters of the 
streams; his shelter, a blanket and the boughs of trees; his 
home, a howling wilderness; his neighbors, wild beasts and 
savages; and not yet the friction-match with which to light 
the dead-wood of his first fires. Then follows the log hut, 
the little clearing and the little mill, men working in groups 
for safety, their guns near at hand in readiness for wild beasts 
and savage men. 

A few of the hardiest brave the severity of the first winter, 
the rest returning to their families. The next spring brings 
these back, and others with them. Seed is sown, vegetables 
are planted, the hearthstone is laid, the meeting-house begun, 
roads are made, and woman's hand begins to busy itself with 
bread-stuffs, the needle, the spinning-wheel and loom, and 
in all the manifold ministrations which make and maintain 
her foremost place in the hearts and homes of men. 

For a time meetings continue to be held in Lancaster and 
Groton. At length they are appointed for the meeting-house 
here. The first one in June, 1735, and, as the principal ap- 
proach to the place is from Lancaster, it is voted that Captain 
Jonas Houghton have five pounds out of the treasury for ma- 

r i7 1 



king the road from Lancaster, along the north side of Wachu- 
sett, to where it meets the path on the south side of the moun- 
tain, near Burntshirt River, so passable as to carry comfort- 
ably with four oxen four barrels of cider in a cart at once. 

It would be interesting to know why such comfortable car- 
riage of so much cider was made the test of utility, and we 
may wonder what cider-carrying capacity the governor now 
requires as the standard of efficiency for the State roads the 
Commonwealth is building for everybody except ourselves, 
but we must not stop to ask him. 

The plantation, because granted, as we have seen, to vol- 
unteers under Lovewell and White, was, in the beginning, 
sometimes called Volunteer's town; but, until its incorpora- 
tion, in 1754, under its present name, it was generally known 
as Nichewaug, the Indian name of the hill on which stand 
the houses of Mr. Gay and Mr. Carter. The first allotments 
of land included those along the crest of the hill, in the gen- 
eral direction of our main street. To these, from time to 
time, were added others until the whole grant was taken up. 

The first meeting-house, fifty feet long by forty wide with 
twenty-one feet stud, was built by the old churchyard, on the 
east side of the Common, near the site of the brick school- 
house. The minister's lot was the land on which is the dwell- 
ing-house of the late Sanford B. Cook. The first inn was lo- 
cated a little northerly of the Nichewaug. The first school- 
house in the centre of the town — afterwards removed, and 
converted into the present dwelling of Mr. Job Lippitt — 
stood near the site of the present one. The first mills were 
probably by the pond on the Barre road, in the pretty val- 
ley known in my boyhood as "Slab City." 

Preaching began in the spring of 1736. The first article 
in the warrants for the proprietors' annual meetings related 
to the salary of the minister, who was hired, paid, criticised, 
discussed, approved, condemned, called, and dismissed un- 
der legislation of the proprietors' meeting — parent of the 
town meeting, the American unit of popular government un- 
til the evolution of the machine and the party boss. 

[18] 



In the absence of fences, cattle and swine were, for many 
years, allowed to run at large, the swine, in the language of 
the records, being yoked and ringed according to law. 

The leading men, farmers, lawyers, doctors, merchants 
and others, became field drivers, hog reeves, deer reeves, and 
other officers of the town for its secular uses, and, for the 
seventh day, besides the minister, the deacons, and the man 
appointed, after the gift of a bell, to ring it an hour before 
meeting and to ring and toll it at the time of meeting and at 
the time of funerals and to sweep the meeting-house and pro- 
vide water for baptism, the town elected tithing-men, who 
are described as a " kind of Sunday constable, whose special 
duty it was, in the old parish meeting, to quiet the restless- 
ness of youth and disturb the slumber of age." 

The meeting-house, which was also the town house, was 
slowly developed rather than built, and was for years the 
constant subject of town action and appropriation. There 
was no provision for warming it, and, in winter, the proprie- 
tors' meetings were generally adjourned to the inn. On Sun- 
days, when the temperature threatened a Christian serenity 
of mind, the women carried with them little foot-stoves filled 
with live coals, which contributed somewhat to the comfort 
of the pew, as did the old-fashioned warming-pan to that of 
the bed in the un warmed room. 

A story of the warming-pan is told of a home in which 
the so-called head of the house used to retire before his better 
half, who had a habit of warming her portion of the bed after 
the lesser fraction had taken possession of his. He so often 
protested, insisting that sooner or later she was sure to burn 
him, that, one night, she pushed the pan vigorously against 
him and sent him howling from the bed to find the cruel 
creature had filled the thing with snow. 

But, like many another in these degenerate days, we are 
wandering from the meeting-house, which, in March, 1739, 
had advanced to a stage at which it was voted that the " Dea- 
cons do buy a descent cushing for the pulpit," and, in 1742, 
it was voted "to lath and plaster." The deacons apparently 

[19] 



did not buy the "dishing;" for in 1748 it was again voted 
to buy a " plush cushing," and that Samuel Willard provide it. 

The meeting-house had at first but one pew, that of the 
minister, and a deacon's seat in front of the pulpit. Later a 
row of pews was built around the house along the walls, at 
the expense of their owners. The intervening space was di- 
vided into two rows of seats fronting the pulpit. These were 
assigned to the inhabitants generally — the better ones to the 
owners of the larger estates, "with some regard," the records 
say, "to age." The women were placed on one side of the 
house and the men on the other. Committees were chosen 
from time to time, to "seat the meeting-house," which was a 
very delicate operation, often involving jealousies and em- 
barrassments. 

In a neighboring town, it is said, some young men built 
for themselves a pew behind the women's seats, which the 
town refused to allow to remain there. The reason is not 
given. Did it perchance divide the devotions of some young 
maiden, and make her 

"... .blush scarlet right in prayer 
When her new meetin' bunnet 
Felt somehow through its crown a pair 
O' blue eyes sot upon it"? 

Occasionally merriment was provoked by the seating of the 
meeting-house. One man in a neighboring town, to whom 
had been assigned pew number 6, which was the last one to- 
ward the outer door, on the following Sunday, marched up 
the aisle counting aloud, in the reverse order, up to 6, which 
brought him to the pew in front, in which he calmly seated 
himself, as much to the amazement of those claiming the 
chief seats in the synagogue as to the amusement of all the 
others. 

The meeting-house was at length completed and often filled 
to overflowing with worshippers who came, at first, with the 
musket, as did the minister, who, while having before him 
his sermon, with a sometimes sulphurous charge for his flock, 

[20] 



kept by his side his gun, with another charge for the savage 
that might suddenly require more pungent preaching. 

At length the old building — which was at one time offered 
to the General Court as an inducement for making a shire 
town of Petersham — gave place to a larger house, designed, 
tradition says, by Bulfinch, the architect of the State House 
front **4*yN*ll€^ttj^ In 

the tower of this second house, a bell, cast by Paul Revere 
and presented by Eleazer Bradshaw, was in due time hung, 
and there voiced the motto cast upon it: 

"The living to the church I call, 
And to the grave I summon all." 

The bell, once cracked and recast, hung there until this sec- 
ond house, in its turn, was superseded by the present build- 
ing of the First Congregational Parish, in the belfry of which 
it was placed and still remains, its mission somewhat affected 
by the changes of time; for the old knell that added to the 
suffering of the afflicted as they bore their dead to the grave 
is no longer sounded, and, though to the church the living still 
are called, a diminishing few go in. 

The schoolhouse was a thing of slower growth, for while 
the mother, sitting at her open door, could see wild beasts 
moving about with their young, and knew that, at any mo- 
ment, the Indians might be prowling near, she was slow to 
suffer her children to go unprotected from her side. But the 
schoolhouse, in due time, came. 

The township was divided into what, at first, were termed 
"school squadrons," corresponding to our districts, which, 
in their turn, are passing away since the adoption of the pres- 
ent custom of conveying scholars from their homes to the 
schools in the centres of the towns. 

Educated teachers were early here. The one most in evi- 
dence was Ensign Mann, long known as Master Mann, a 
Harvard graduate, the ancestor of Mr. George S. Mann, 
a lifelong friend of Petersham, who knows a good deal about 
it and ought to write its history. 

[21] 



Ensign Mann first came here as a candidate about 1767, 
a dozen years after the incorporation of the town, when con- 
ditions were ripening for the outbreak of the Revolution. He 
was so warm an advocate and so zealous a worker in the 
cause of liberty as to arouse the opposition of the more con- 
servative people, among whom was the first " Gospel Minis- 
ter," the*reverend Aaron Whitney, who refused to partici- 
pate in Mann's examination and withheld his approval; but 
the young candidate prevailed, entered upon his labors, be- 
came a leader of the patriots, and by his ardor aroused the 
increasing disapproval of the royalists, to whose arguments 
for his conversion he remained indifferent until he encoun- 
tered the eyes of Miss Alice, the minister's daughter. Under 
their fire he is said to have surrendered unconditionally, and 
to have passed, and loyally remained, under the yoke of his 
new allegiance. 

Streams and their adjoining lands were granted to persons 
who engaged to build saw and grist mills and to keep them 
in repair ten years and to sell good pitch pine boards for forty 
shillings per thousand or saw to the halves during said pe- 
riod. 

Ask the pulp and match companies where now are the 
pitch pine boards and the picturesque old up-and-down saw- 
mills — the pulp companies that supply the great newspa- 
pers, a single issue of only one of which consumes the spruce 
of acres; the match companies that send by the millions 
our sapling pines, riddled into splinters, to light the pipes of 
Europe and, for aught we know, the camp-fires of Russia 
and Japan. The teeth of their screaming blades are every- 
where tearing through the hearts of our trees and leaving, in 
their trail, sawdust and scattered branches to feed the forest 
fires that leave in ashes, desecration, and desolation the 
sighing groves, God's first temples, in which the thrush has 
sung his praise. 

Some of us remember the old mills and how, as boys, we 
sat upon the logs and were hitched and jerked backward and 
forward to the movement and the music of the dancing saw, 

[22] 



and how, in the old grist-mills, while waiting for our grists, 
we popped corn on the old box stoves in full sympathy with 
the impatient lad who, eager to get away, said to the miller : 

" I could eat that meal faster than your old mill grinds it ! " 

"How long?" asked the miller. 

"Till I starved to death,*' said the lad. 

In the early days there was constant laying out of roads, 
that led to store and mill and meeting, to neighboring farms 
and towns, to the county seat, and to adjoining States; and 
it appears that the economical fashion of " working out taxes" 
by leaning on the hoe-handle and swapping stories was early 
introduced, for we find it voted that "the surveyors shall 
judge whether the men that work at the roads do a day's 
work in a day." 

Rewards were offered for the tails of rattlesnakes and the 
heads of crows and wolves, and for the discovery of the vil- 
lain or villains who broke the glass in the warrant and pub- 
lishing boxes. 

During vacancies in the pulpit sums were appropriated to 
meet the expense of "riding after ministers," the need of 
whom was emphasized by the organization of a company of 
forty men, each to have a good horse, for the detection and 
punishment of thieves. The poor were sold, " by Vandue, to 
those who would keep them cheapest." Committees were 
chosen to get rid of the paupers coming from other towns, 
and to manufacture pearlash, sulphur, and saltpetre, and 
"in order to prepare kittles to make salt." 

Provision was made for the purchase of firearms and for 
accumulation of flints, powder, and lead. 

Some of us remember ah old powder-house that stood, dur- 
ing our childhood, easterly of my farm barn, in the pasture 
which then belonged to my father. I have a vivid recollec- 
tion of the building, for it contained a large chest filled with 
munitions of war, from which, without orders from head- 
quarters, I one day took some cartridges and emptied them 
of powder, to which I applied a match to see if it would burn. 
The experiment was successful. The powder responded with 

[23] 



customary promptness, burned to a crisp my woolen tippet, 
scorched my eyebrows and eyelashes, singed what hair it 
found below my cap, and left upon my cheeks two tell-tale 
blisters that soon after drew from me a reluctant explana- 
tion, under the cross — the very cross — examination of my 
father. 

Although the period from the grant of the township, in 
1733, until years after its incorporation, in 1754, was filled 
with matters of local and personal interest, it is marked by 
few events of such importance as to justify extended com- 
ment here. 

Noticeable facts, distinguishing the early from the pres- 
ent time, were the almost authoritative influence of the min- 
isters and the length of their pastorates. Denominational 
differences had not begun to organize and proclaim those 
diversities of view which defeat assent to any one belief and 
tend to discredit all, and individual disagreements had not 
yet destroyed the outward unity of church relationship. Town 
and parish were one. Meeting-house and town house were 
one. All subjects of common interest were there considered 
and generally acted upon without seriously affecting the dig- 
nity of the pastor or the sanctity of the pastoral office. 

The settlement of the "Gospel Minister" implied a sort 
of marriage for the better or worse of a lifelong union, which 
often followed, and bore the fruitage of powerful and benign 
influence that held shepherd and flock in the bonds of a deep 
and abiding reverence and affection. 

The first four pastorates in the town covered a period of 
nearly a hundred years, as was the case in many towns, a 
single pastorate not infrequently continuing for more than 
fifty years. 

The first settled minister, Aaron Whitney, was installed in 
1738, and occupied his pulpit until his loyalty to his king and 
his outspoken belief that the grievances suffered under the 
royal government were less than those to be anticipated from 
rebellion became so offensive to the majority of his people 
that the town voted not "to hire, bargain with, nor employ 

[24] 



the Rev. Mr. Whitney to preach" for them, and this vote 
was accented by appointment of a committee of ten " to see 
that the publick worship on Lord's Day next and all future 
worship be not disturbed by any person going into the desk 
but such as shall be put there by the town's committee." 

When the reverend gentleman next attempted to enter the 
pulpit, tradition says he found the committee's instructions 
embodied in the form of a half-breed Indian behind a pitch- 
fork and in front of the meeting-house door. This pointed 
argument proved so persuasive that the venerable pastor 
withdrew and confined his after-preaching to his own house 
and to such sympathizing friends as cared to hear him there. 
But a few years after his death, when political bitterness had 
subsided, the town erected a monument at his grave "in 
token of their regard for him." 

Mr. Whitney left a large family. One of his sons, Rev. 
Peter Whitney, wrote a history of Worcester County. Three 
of his descendants were, Professor Whitney, the eminent phi- 
lologist of Yale University, Professor Whitney, the equally 
distinguished geologist of Harvard University, and a brother 
of these, who was recently the librarian of the Boston Public 
Library. 

Solomon Reed, Mr. Whitney's immediate successor, a 
notable man in many ways, remained in his pulpit until his 
growing tendency to confound spiritual and spirituous dis- 
tinctions led to the appointment of a committee to visit him 
and urge diminished indulgence. This committee, it is said, 
encountered such urbanity and overflowing hospitality on 
the part of the reverend gentleman and his accomplished wife, 
who was famous for her flip, that all its members withdrew 
from their courtly presence having obtained what they termed 
Christian satisfaction, but with reputations for sobriety and 
efficiency as remonstrants greatly impaired. Let it not be 
forgotten, however, that this was before the evils of intem- 
perance were publicly proclaimed, at a period when slavery 
still existed in Petersham, when rum and sugar were among 
things provided for the ordination of ministers, and when 

[25] 



common hospitality demanded the offer and acceptance of 
beverages of an ardent variety. His pastoral relation was 
finally ended at his own request. 

He also left a large family who became valuable members 
of society. One of his daughters married Dr. Joseph Flint, 
a distinguished physician at one time in practice here, as the 
immediate successor of an eminent kinsman, Dr. John Flint, 
grandfather of the Misses Flint who recently owned the house 
now belonging to Mrs. Emerton, of Salem. Dr. Joseph Flint 
was the son of Dr. Austin Flint, of Leicester, and father of 
the celebrated Dr. Austin Flint of New York, a native of 
Petersham, who became president of the American Medical 
Society and died, not long since, on the eve of a visit to Eng- 
land to deliver an address as the official representative of his 
profession in the United States. The latter was the great- 
grandfather of Cuvier Grover Flint, a gentleman four years 
of age, known to some of you as a somewhat prominent res- 
ident of this town for the past few months. 

It is needless to refer to the later ministers or the friction 
of their pastorates. The church records show the forefathers 
and mothers to have been very like the after fathers and 
mothers, and no less susceptible to the influence of weather 
and the various forms of indisposition that affect the modern 
zeal for church attendance, in spite of creeds, covenants, 
canons and catechisms, and of committees appointed to act 
upon the offence of non-attendance and neglect of ordinances. 

One Lydia Blank, under examination by a committee, 
said her husband opposed her attendance. This he denied. 
Then she said the pastor had made a bet, lost it, and refused 
to pay, and that she could not, in conscience, thereafter hear 
him preach. As it appeared that she had neglected to attend 
before the alleged wager and when other ministers were in 
the pulpit, the defence was deemed inadequate. 

Betsy Blank gave as her reason for neglect of duty that 
the church had made her unhappy by its attempt to punish 
her husband. This, too, was deemed insufficient. One man 
claimed his freedom because he had changed his views and 

[26] 



considered his religion a matter solely between himself and 
his God. A revolutionary soldier objected to his pastor's in- 
terest in politics, and he was charged with becoming so bel- 
ligerent whenever visited by the committee as to induce the 
belief that he was without that wisdom which is gentle and 
easy to be entreated, and the committee declined further 
watch and ward over him. 

Not many of the original proprietors ever permanently 
settled here. The names of Gates and Wilder are the only 
ones still borne by inhabitants of the town. But from the be- 
ginning Petersham attracted able and cultivated men, and 
the place had a rapid growth which gave it early prominence 
among the towns of Worcester County. 

Its agriculture was profitable and its trade remunerative. 
Its leading farmers, merchants, business men, ministers, law- 
yers, doctors, and teachers were persons of intelligence, char- 
acter, reputation, and influence that extended beyond the 
limits of the town. 

At the end of the eighteenth century the town had a pop- 
ulation of 1,800, more than double its present population, 
and its early prosperity was fairly maintained until the mid- 
dle of the century following, when the great manufacturing 
centres, the growing cities, the developing lines of railroad 
and sea-borne transportation, the opening up to settlement 
of the fertile prairies of the West, the new discoveries of the 
precious metals, and the many other appeals to youthful in- 
telligence, energy, and enterprise drew the young men from 
the hills and, throughout rural New England, slowly pre- 
pared the way for the deserted hearthstone and the aban- 
doned farm, where now, too often, are seen only the open or 
brush-covered cellar, the bucketless well, the clump of lilacs, 
and, perhaps, the hectic flush of a clinging rose, to mark the 
places where the forefathers fought the savage and the soil; 

where 

"Ag'in the chimbley crooknecks hung 

An' in amongst 'em rusted 

The ole Queen's arm that gran'ther Young 

Fetched back from Concord, busted," — 

[27] 



and whence have issued their descendants to become the sol- 
diers, statesmen, engineers, lawyers, preachers, poets, artists, 
writers, and leaders who, throughout the land, have builded, 
in their manifold manhood, the noblest monuments of our 
modern antiquity of Old New England. 

Fiske, in his " Critical Period of American History," speak- 
ing of the men trained in town-meeting and believing it all- 
important that people should manage their own affairs, says 
that the principle was carried so far in Massachusetts that 
the towns were like little semi-republics and the State a league 
of such republics. The truth of this finds notable illustration 
in the records of this town. 

At a meeting held here Dec. 30, 1772, in response to the 
circular letter from the Boston Committee of Correspondence 
containing a statement of the rights and grievances of the 
province, nine of the leading citizens of the town were chosen 
a Petersham Committee of Correspondence to deal with these 
matters and to prepare resolutions for the town and instruc- 
tions for its representatives. This committee, answering the 
letter, congratulates the Boston committee on the virtue of 
Boston which led them to take the initiative in so good a 
cause, in the face of its exposure to the first efforts of the 
"iron jaws of power," and continues as follows: 

The time may come when, if you continue your integrity, you 
may be driven from your goodly heritages and, if that should be the 
case (which God, of his infinite mercy prevent), we invite you to 
share with us in our small supplies of the necessaries of life, and, 
should the voracious jaws of tyranny still haunt us and we should 
not be able to withstand them, we are determined to retire and seek 
refuge among the inland aboriginal natives of the country, with whom 
we doubt not but to find more humanity and brotherly love than we 
have lately received from our mother country. We send herewith an 
attested copy of the doings of our town. If the nature of causes ever 
again bespeaks any more from us, we then again shall offer what 
then may appear right, for we read that those that were faithful 
spake often one to another and may God of his infinite mercy in his 
own time deliver us. 

[28] 



The records of the town invite a full reading as the decla- 
ration of the "semi-republic" of Petersham, three years be- 
fore the famous Declaration of 1776 ; but they can be quoted 
only in part. 

On Jan. 4, 1773, five days after the meeting of December 
30 referred to, the committee reported as follows : 

The town having received a circular letter from the town of Bos- 
ton respecting the present grievances and abominable oppression 
under which this country groans, have therefore taken into their 
most serious consideration the present policy of the British govern- 
ment and administration with regard to Great Britain and their col- 
onies, have carefully reviewed the mode of election and the quality 
of the electors of the commons of that island, and have also atten- 
tively reflected upon the enormous and growing influence of the 
crown and that bane of all free states — a standing army in the time 
of peace — and, in consequence thereof, are fully confirmed in the 
opinion that the ancient rights of the nation are capitally invaded 
and the greatest part of the most precious liberties of Englishmen 
utterly destroyed — and, whereas the parliament of Great Britain 
by various statutes and acts have unrighteously distressed our trade, 
denied and precluded us from the setting up and carrying on of man- 
ufactures highly beneficial to the inhabitants of these territories, re- 
stricted and prevented our lawful intercourse and commerce with 
other states and kingdoms, and have also made laws and institutions 
touching life and limb in disherison of the ancient common law of 
the land, and, moreover, have, in these latter times, robbed and 
plundered the honest and laborious inhabitants of this extensive con- 
tinent of their prosperity by mere force and power, and are now drain- 
ing this people of the fruits of their toil by thus raising a revenue 
from them against the natural rights of man and in open violation 
of the laws of God : This town, in union with the worthy inhabitants 
of the town of Boston, now think of their indispensable duty to con- 
sider of the premises and the present aspect of the times and to take 
such steps as, upon mature deliberation, are judged right and ex- 
pedient, and hereupon the town Resolved, that, with a governor ap- 
pointed from Great Britain during pleasure, with a large stipend 
dependent upon the will of the Crown and controlled by instructions 
from a British Minister of State, with a council subject to the nega- 
tive of such a governor, and with all officers, civil and military, sub- 

[29] 



ject to his appointment or consent, with a castle in the hands of a 
standing army, stationed in the very bowels of the land, and with 
that amazing number of place-men and dependents with which 
every maritime town already swarms, no people can ever be truly 
virtuous, free or brave : — 

Resolved, that the parliament of Great Britain, usurping and ex- 
ercising legislative authority over and extorting an unrighteous rev- 
enue from these colonies against all divine and human law and the 
late appointment of salaries to be paid to our superior court judges, 
whose creation, pay and commission depend upon mere will and 
pleasure, completes a system of bondage equal to any ever before 
fabricated by the combined efforts of ingenuity, malice, fraud, and 
wickedness of man. 

If we have an eye to our posterity, not only in this world but in 
the world to come, it is our duty to oppose such a government and 
. . . this people, for the obtainment of a speedy redress of these mighty 
grievances and intolerable wrongs, are warranted by the laws of God 
and Nature in the use of every rightful art and energy of policy, 
strategem, and force, and they appeal to the throne of the great God 
for that spirit of valor and irresistible courage which shall occasion 
our aged and our youth to jeopard their lives with joy in the high 
places of the field for the preservation of this goodly heritage of our 
fathers, for the sake of the living children of our loins and the un- 
born millions of our posterity. 

These resolutions, with instructions of like tenor to the 
representative in the Legislature, received the unanimous 
vote of the town and were widely quoted in this country and 
abroad, where they were printed in full in a " History of the 
Rise, Progress, and Establishment of the Independence of 
the United States of America," published in London in 1788. 

Do they not stir our blood to-day, after the interval of more 
than a hundred years, and may we not wonder how this dec- 
laration of the little Petersham in Massachusetts at first 
sounded in the ears of that other ham of St. Peter in the sub- 
urbs of London ? 

The spirit of these resolutions prevailed in all after-action 
of the town, in spite of the heated opposition of a considerable 

[30] 



number, embracing some of the most respectable and influ- 
ential persons among its inhabitants, who, loyal to their es- 
tablished government, covenanted that they would recognize 
no congresses, committees of correspondence, or other un- 
constitutional assemblages of men, and pledged themselves 
to resist the forcible exercise of all such authority, repelling 
force with force, in case of the invasion of their rights of 
person or property. 

These royalists or tories were publicly censured, and the 
town ordered printed, posted at all the taverns, and broadly 
circulated, three hundred hand-bills, calling them "incorri- 
gible enemies of freedom and of their country," and forbade 
all commerce with them, as "traitorous parasites who were 
willing to enslave their bretheren and posterity forever." 

These amenities obtained, in 1767, the following rhymed 
expression in the Massachusetts Spy: 

"With minds eclipsed and eke depraved, 

As meek as any lamb, 
The wretches who would be enslaved 

That live in Petersham, 
For you, ye worthless Tory band, 
Who would not lawless power withstand, 
The scorn and scandal of the land, 
Be endless plagues and fetters! 
Ye want abilities and brains, 

Though headstrong as a ram, 
And seem to mourn the want of chains, 

Ye tools of Petersham! 
For slaves like you the rod of power 
Is pickling for some future hour; 
The taste will prove austere and sour 
E'en to the wretch that flatters." 

Such interchange of courtesies between old friends and 
neighbors did not end without violence, involving at one 
time a barricaded house, surrounded with shotted guns and 
men behind them, and at least two women in tearful sympa- 

[31] 



thy over a pair of husbands — one within and the other with- 
out the barricade — among the besiegers and the besieged; 
but, fortunately, no very serious trouble followed. 

A large majority of the people remained loyal to the cause 
of liberty and active in preparation for the impending strug- 
gle. Town-meetings were frequent, enlistments early, ap- 
propriations liberal, and, at length, on April 12, 1775, a week 
before the Battle of Lexington, the town voted that "every 
male inhabitant, from 16 years old and upward, be warned 
to meet at the meeting-house in Petersham with arms and 
ammunition," on the Monday following. Two days after 
this meeting, on that nineteenth of April that resounded with 
"the shot heard round the world," its soldiers were on the 
march for the defence of Boston. They were at Bunker Hill, 
at Bennington, at Saratoga, at the surrender of Burgoyne, 
and, throughout the war, wherever their country called them. 

On that famous July 4, 1776, while the men who signed 
the Declaration of Independence were in session in Philadel- 
phia, the inhabitants of Petersham were assembled in their 
meeting-house, in active preparation for their part in the 
work which that Declaration involved and which only in- 
telligent, earnest, and unfaltering patriotism could have 
achieved; and, everywhere and at all times, in the army, in 
the general court, in provincial congresses, and in the Con- 
gress of the United States, able and energetic representation 
of Petersham was to be found eagerly rendering any service 
reasonably required of it. 

Following the war were consequences and conditions 
which, not long after its close, led to the insurrection in Massa- 
chusetts, known as Shays 's Rebellion. Adequate consider- 
ation of this would require more than the time accorded us 
to-day, but, as that rebellion practically ended in this town, 
it is a matter demanding brief notice here. 

It grew out of the results of the revolutionary struggle. A 
long and impoverishing war had produced grave public and 
private embarrassment not unlike that which accompanied 
the exhaustion of the Southern States at the end of our Civil 

[32] 



War. People sought relief in trade. Goods were heavily im- 
ported, luxury appeared, specie disappeared, bankruptcy, 
distress, and litigation followed. The general government 
was under burdensome obligations resulting from the war. 
The State had incurred heavy indebtedness in carrying it 
on; the towns, in furnishing men; and individuals, in meet- 
ing the demands upon themselves. 

During the war private interests were in a measure sub- 
ordinated to public considerations. When war ended and 
the courts resumed peaceful sessions all these obligations 
arose, swollen with accumulated interest, and demanded set- 
tlement. Nobody could wait, and nobody could pay. Con- 
gress pressed the States for their proportion of the national 
debt; the States became strenuous and individuals impor- 
tunate. This was especially true of Massachusetts, which 
had furnished one third of the effective force in the national 
service. Her debt to the general government, to the officers 
and soldiers she had sent to the war, and her other obliga- 
tions amounted to $10,000,000. The only sources of revenue 
were from diminished and diminishing importations and 
from estates and polls overwhelmed with embarrassment 
and less than 100,000 in number. Heavy taxes were assessed 
upon an impoverished* distressed, and disheartened people. 
These taxes and the thousands of cases pending for collec- 
tion of debts — a single attorney sometimes bringing a hun- 
dred suits in a single court — produced intense bitterness of 
feeling. Lawyers, in the simple discharge of professional 
duty, became objects of deep resentment, which extended 
to courts and judges and, finally, developed into armed com- 
bination to prevent the peaceful administration of justice. 
Against this the militia, themselves largely insurgents or dis- 
affected, were of no avail. Matters reached such threaten- 
ing proportions that rebellion was declared and an army of 
between four thousand and five thousand men was raised to 
suppress it. 

This army, in which was the company of Captain Park 
Holland, of Petersham, was under command of General 

[33] 



Lincoln, who had been an able officer in the War of the Rev- 
olution. He marched first to Worcester and enabled the 
courts there to hold their sessions. Thence he proceeded to 
Springfield, where the insurgents, under Captain Shays, were 
concentrated with the intention of capturing the arsenal, 
which was guarded by General Shepherd. 

Having in vain exhausted all peaceful appeals to Shays, 
Shepherd finally opened fire upon the rebels and forced them 
to retreat to the neighboring towns. After the arrival of 
Lincoln and some days of ineffectual parleying, Shays again 
retreated — this time to Petersham, where it is supposed he 
expected to find recruits and, if necessary, make a stand. 

Lincoln immediately followed with infantry, cavalry, and 
artillery, as hotly as may be predicated of an all-night pursuit, 
in the bitter cold of winter, in the face of a pitiless snow- 
storm, without food, rest, or shelter, on an uninterrupted 
march of thirty miles, which has been likened, in hardship, 
exposure, and suffering, to the retreat of the French from 
Moscow. 

Fortunately, no one actually perished, and, early Sunday 
morning, Feb. 4, 1787 (Col. Ephraim Stearns, ancestor of 
Mrs. Jas. Stowell, leading the government troops), Lincoln's 
army was on our hill, to the utter amazement of Shays, one 
hundred and fifty of whose men were taken prisoners. The 
rest, leaving in some cases their hot coffee, hats, and muskets, 
hastily retreated towards Athol, taking the road which passed 
the house now occupied by Miss Letitia Davenport, and the 
back of the rebellion was broken. Such of Shays 's men as 
did not lay down their arms and return to their homes scat- 
tered in different directions but made no serious further dis- 
turbance. Leaders were indicted, convicted of treason, and 
sentenced to be hanged; and glorious old Sam Adams, who 
had no sympathy or patience with armed opposition to the 
laws of a republic, would have sent them all to the gibbet. 
But another feeling prevailed. Great consideration was felt 
for men many of whom, having borne arms for their country 
in redress of grievances suffered under British rule, were 

[34] 



misled into the belief that the then existing hardships were 
grievances of the same character, to be redressed in the same 
way. 

Two commissioners were appointed, one of them General 
Lincoln, with authority to pardon except in a few cases. Am- 
nesty became general and finally universal, including even 
Shays, of whom ran the old rhyme : 

"My name is Shays; in former days, 
In Pelham I did dwell, sir, 
But now I 'm forced to leave that place 
Because I did rebel, sir." 

For the half-century following little occurred to affect the 
quiet and prosperity of the town which, on July 4, fifty years 
ago, celebrated the centennial anniversary of its incorpora- 
tion, when the late Rev. Edmund B. Willson, of Salem, a na- 
tive of Petersham, delivered here an able and interesting ad- 
dress which contains the fullest existing town history, from 
which I have freely borrowed for the present occasion. 

That period, as already intimated, marks the beginning 
of the decline in population and material prosperity which 
has gradually brought us to existing conditions. Shortly be- 
fore that date, and until a destructive fire, in 1847, swept 
nearly every building from the west side of the Common, 
there were here a large factory for the manufacture of lasting 
buttons, several places for pressing and boxing for market 
palm-leaf hats, which were then braided here in considerable 
quantities by the women and children of the town. There 
were shoe-shops, tailors' shops, a harness-shop, a jewelers' 
shop, two stores, two doctors, two lawyers, — one of them 
trying as many cases as any other in Worcester County, — 
three carriage-builders, a half-dozen blacksmiths, large and 
profitable farms, three comparatively well-filled churches, 
two hotels, and two six-horse daily mail-coaches going re- 
spectively to and from Worcester, Greenfield, and Brattle- 
boro. Those then engaged in the various callings referred to 
were the men who celebrated the anniversary of a half-cen- 

[35] 



tury ago. They are gone, and their very names, with few ex- 
ceptions, are well-nigh forgotten by all but a few of us gray- 
heads who then were boys and girls. 

At that time colored men, women, and children were 
bought and sold like cattle, by public auction, in the capital 
of this great republic, by citizens proud of their Constitution, 
ordained and established to secure the blessings of liberty to 
themselves and their posterity. The country was again upon 
the brink of that hell of war that opened, not long after, with 
the first shot at SunWter, as did the War of the Revolution, 
nearly a hundred years before, with that first shot that an- 
nounced the struggle for liberty. 

What this war was, what it cost, what it achieved, and what 
names it gave to fame throughout the United States — for 
the soldier and patriot loyal to his highest ideals was found 
among the vanquished as well as among the victors — you 
all know. The story is in a thousand volumes, has been re- 
hearsed on many a Memorial Day, and will be so long as 
its heroes remain to receive the tributes of a grateful people. 

What it meant to the anxious and stricken hearts in this 
town and in Barre, and to their Co. F of the Fifty-third Mass- 
achusetts Regiment (only this surviving remnant of which 
is with you to-day), is best told in the generous tribute to 
Captain Mudge and his shattered company delivered here, 
five years ago, by Mr. Simes, in his admirable memorial ad- 
dress, which had very much to say for the head and heart of 
both its author and his subject. 

When John Green Mudge came to Petersham, in 1849, 
there came a brave, gentle, upright, unselfish, many-sided, 
and widely gifted man, who learned to love the town as have 
very few of its natives, and who, for forty years, served it in 
every relationship as did no other man. When he died, as 
Mr. Simes well said, something seemed taken out of Peters- 
ham that never could be replaced. The one labor of his life 
in which he took the most pride was his own and that of his 
company by the waters of the Mississippi, and the thing that 
most stirred the enthusiasm of his last days was the erection, 

[36] 



at his instigation, in memory of the patriotic men who had 
served their town and country, of a public library which 
should afford to coming generations such knowledge of worthy 
achievement and such inspiration to worthy action as were not 
easily accessible to the youth of his earlier days. 

He lived to see completed the building which contains our 
library of nine thousand volumes founded by the late Fran- 
cis Augustus Brooks, a native of Petersham, and grand- 
nephew of Eleazer Bradshaw, before referred to as the giver 
of the old Paul Revere bell. All of Captain Mudge's friends, 
— and all who rightly knew him were his friends — hoped he 
would live many years to see the usefulness of the Memorial 
Building and its well-selected and rapidly multiplying vol- 
umes, but, unhappily, its dedication was the good man's fu- 
neral. 

Shakespeare said, 

"The evil that men do lives after them, 
The good is oft interred with their bones." 

It sometimes happens that the good men do lives after them. 
Among the many grateful friends whom Captain Mudge left 
here was Miss Lucy Flora Willis, an unfortunate woman who 
was for many years a great sufferer. Rheumatism had de- 
stroyed her eyesight, drawn her bones from their sockets, 
deprived her of all use of her limbs, and left her a bedridden, 
helpless, hopeless invalid, in total darkness and almost utter 
despair. Her suffering established the only needed claim to 
the benevolent man's sympathy and kindness, and the poor 
woman found in him such unfailing cheer, encouragement, 
consolation, and comfort that when, after he had gone, she 
directed the preparation of her will, she said, " What I have 
I shall give to the Memorial Library, which meant so much 
to Captain Mudge ; for he was always most kind to me, and 
I think, if he were living, I could thus give him more pleas- 
ure than by any other use I could make of my property." 

Before leaving the subject of our library, which forms the 
prominent public feature in the late development of the town, 

[371 



we must very gratefully mention the name of Mr. Francis H. 
Lee, of Salem. He is with us, and much of what would other- 
wise be said must be omitted. But we owe it to ourselves 
to say that to him, more than to any one else, we owe our 
library and its constant growth, as well as much else of great 
value to us. His generosity is sleepless and untiring. With 
him a good deed done means always another somewhere be- 
gun; and when — as we hope long hence — his active kind- 
ness to us shall cease, those who survive him here again will 
say something has gone out of Petersham which cannot be 
replaced. 

There is a piece of railway in Germany on which it is said 
the modern engine has been driven at the rate of one hundred 
and fifty miles an hour, — a speed at which the passenger, 
looking at everything by the roadside, sees nothing, because 
all is blended in inextricable confusion. 

I fear only such confusion will attend my effort to give you 
one hundred and fifty years of Petersham in sixty minutes — 
or thereabouts — for I perceive our old engine is not quite 
making schedule time. 

There has been opportunity merely to glance at our periods 
of barren wilderness, of fruitful cultivation, of struggle and 
disaster, and of growth and decline from that dark time of the 
wigwam to this bright day of the summer cottage, from the 
isolation and deprivation of the beginning to this hour of rural 
delivery and the electric wire that bring to the door of the 
outlying farmhouse and to the ear of the farmer the written 
and spoken word of the whole planet, and enable the touch 
of a button in Washington to instantly start the massive ma- 
chinery on the opposite side of the continent. 

Who have been the actors here in these years that, through- 
out the world, have produced greater changes than were 
wrought in all the preceding years of the Christian era ? There 
is hardly time to read a catalogue of their names, some of 
which might well have taken all our time to-day. There was 
Colonel Grout, a leader in all town affairs, a soldier in the 
French wars, a member of the Committee of Correspondence, 

[38] 



a representative in both branches of our Legislature, in our 
provincial congresses, and in the first Congress of the United 
States; Colonel Doolittle, also a member of that committee, 
whose regiment was on the march to Cambridge on the day of 
the battle of Lexington and was at the battle of Bunker Hill ; 
the Chandlers, members of the foremost family in Worcester 
County, graduates of Harvard College, pupils of John Adams, 
leaders among our earliest merchants and business men, an- 
cestors of Mrs. Dr. Ware, of Lancaster, of the late Mrs. Prof. 
Theophilus Parsons, of Cambridge, both natives of Peters- 
ham, and of Professor Chandler of the Institute of Technol- 
ogy, Boston. 

There were the Willards, members of a noted family, dif- 
ferent branches of which furnished two presidents for Har- 
vard College, a pastor for the Old South Church in Boston, 
the architect of Bunker Hill Monument, — the still living Jo- 
seph Willard, for more than fifty years clerk of the courts of 
Suffolk County; — the once widely known Samuel Willard, 
the blind preacher of Deerfield, and our own honored Deacon 
Cephas Willard, a strong, brave man, for more than a half- 
century officer of church, town, county, and state; trusted 
and trustworthy always and everywhere; declining service 
only once, and that when directed, as sheriff, to execute a 
criminal, his answer being, " I can resign, but I cannot per- 
form that act;" a man who could say, as he held the hand of 
his dying wife : " We have lived together fifty-eight years and 
I do not know that either ever spoke a word that gave the 
other pain." He died at 92, and when asked, near the end of 
life, the secret of his health and strength, said, "I always 
walked on the sunny side of the road when the choice was 
mine." 

There were the Sandersons, strong, patriotic, and widely 
useful men, of integrity and influence; the Hollands, soldiers, 
engineers, inventors, one of their descendants, the late Dr. 
J. G. Holland, author and editor of Scribner's and The 
Century magazines; the Hammonds, capable and trusted 
men in many responsible places, one a graduate of Dart- 

[39] 



mouth, who became president of South Carolina College, 
and his son Governor of the State and one of its United States 
Senators; the Neguses, prominent among our townspeople, 
a single family of whose gifted girls became : one, the wife of 
Richard Hildreth, the historian; another, the mother of Ful- 
ler, the artist; another, the mother of the late Thomas and 
Benjamin Howe (the latter of whom wrote of Petersham 
men and things many sketches that are among our most val- 
uable records); another, the mother of Corporal Benjamin 
W. Spooner, irreverently known as "Ben," our marshal to- 
day, and the only man in town whose homestead, built by 
an ancestor, has sheltered six lineal generations; and these 
were not all of those Negus girls. 

Mary Ann Howe, who wrote the hymn sung at our former 
celebration. How familiar to some of us her big shears and 
goose and pressing-board and big steel thimble, that, for 
many years, went with her, from farm to farm, to cut and 
stitch and press the clothing of the farmer and his boys, at 
fifty cents a day! How her keen wits gauged his character 
and habits as her tape took measurements of his tabernacle 
of flesh! — an industrious and helpful being, the product of 
whose honest and ill-paid toil was many a generous deed in 
life and a handsome sum bequeathed at death. How rough 
her left forefinger, where the needle pricked it! And what 
conscience went into the jerk of her linen thread as she drew 
our buttons home to stay! — an altogether excellent woman, 
although it must be confessed she wrought such similarity 
of expression into the fore and aft of our trousers as to remind 
us of the breeches of the little chap whose mother said that, 
when too far away to see his face, she could never tell whether 
he was going to school or coming home. 

There were also the Bigelows, Daniel and Lewis, eminent 
lawyers, the latter of whom wrote the first digest of the re- 
ports of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts and was at one 
time a member of Congress ; the Mileses, father and grand- 
father of Lieutenant-General Miles of the United States Army; 
the Howes, Sylvanus, chairman of our famous Committee of 

[40] 



Correspondence, owner of the largest and most productive 
farm in town, now the property of Franklin Haven, of Bos- 
ton, and his brother, Captain Asa, of whom is told the story 
that, late in life, one day in haying, on the approach of a 
shower, he undertook alone to place all the hay two men 
could pitch upon his cart, and finding the task too much for 
him, slid down onto the back of one of his oxen and thence 
to the ground, and when asked why he came down, said, 
"For more hay;" the Bryants, for many years and still in 
responsible official service of the town; Doctor Parkhurst, 
our president here a half-century ago, an able physician and 
prominent citizen of dignified and courtly bearing. How well 
some of us remember his hospitable home and his attractive 
family, his old gig and saddle-bags and the smell and taste 
of his pills and powders ! 

There were dear Old Sampson Wetherell, our worthy cit- 
izen and kindly neighbor and friend, who was so long store- 
keeper and postmaster that he seemed a sort of perennial 
Santa Claus, creating and dispensing the blessings of his 
candy-counter and the mails; Isaac Ayers, the smell and 
taste of whose big sweet apples was one of our autumnal an- 
ticipations; the Towers, farmers, teachers, a preacher, a mer- 
chant, a banker, councillor and member of the Governor's 
Staff; the Willsons, ever active and generous benefactors of 
the town; the Lincolns, the Spooners, the Hildreths, the 
Weeds, the Rosses, the Stones, the Fosters, the Hapgoods, 
the Whites, the Wilders, the Houghtons, the Williamses, the 
Wadsworths, the McCartys, the Clarks, the Reeds, the God- 
dards, the Bosworths, the Peckhams, the Cooks, — yes, even 
the Brooks, if you were not already inundated by their over- 
flow. 

To most of you these are but empty names. I call them 
for the few of us for whom they repeople farmhouse, town 
house, meeting-house, and schoolhouse, reopen hospitable 
doors, rekindle the warmth and glow of old hearthstones, 
and restore, for the moment, the light of departed days, and 

[41] 



of the eyes that made them memorable. Hail to them all, 
and farewell! 

I shall pronounce but two more names, — those of John 
Fiske and his son Ralph, both at rest in the old churchyard 
yonder. 

If Dr. Fiske had lived until now, we should have had the 
privilege of listening to him here to-day. This was not to be. 
Gifted as not many men have been, rich in knowledge that 
could not be transmitted, master of an art that he could not 
bequeath, at the zenith of his great power, anticipating the 
performance of the best work of his life, and on the eve of 
crossing the Atlantic to address the English people, at their 
request, on the one-thousandth anniversary of the death of 
King Alfred, he crossed his threshold for a breath of sea air 
and, in a few hours, on July 4, 1901, had crossed the threshold 
of death. 

I refer to him not because of the great man he was, or of 
the monumental work he did, but for his association with 
our little town. 

From the day of his first coming here, between forty and 
fifty years ago, to the end of his life he loved these hills as he 
loved no other spot on earth. From whatever beautiful place, 
on either side of the Atlantic, his letters afterwards came, 
it was always to say that this remained to him the most beau- 
tiful of all. He called it his native place, explaining that here 
he was born again. He said that if his work had not required 
him to be near the great libraries of Cambridge and Boston, 
he should have here spent the greater part of his time. Of 
death he used to say it had no terrors, for it simply meant 
going to Petersham to stay. 

Of all his works, none have been more widely read and 
translated than his four little volumes upon religious sub- 
jects, grateful appreciation of which came to him from many 
sources and all denominations, even ministers saying they had 
been to them the salvation of their faith. 

Two of these, "The Destiny of Man" and "The Idea of 
God," were written and dedicated, respectively, to his wife 

[42] 



and children, in the old Brooks homestead in Petersham, and 
the latter was first read to a group of friends under the shade 
of its old maples. 

These little volumes merit a word beyond the mere men- 
tion of their place of birth, for they deal with things of local, 
because of universal, interest. " The Idea of God" and " The 
Destiny of Man" awaken the first questionings of child- 
hood and affect the tranquillity of age. They are part of 
the history of Petersham because they are the germ of all 
history and of all biography, inspiring the aspirations of the 
saint and the forebodings of the sinner. They have slowly 
evolved the all-embracing conception of the one fatherhood 
of God and the one brotherhood of man. They determine 
for the ploughman in his furrow, for the smith at his forge, 
for the statesman in the halls of legislation, and for the judge 
upon the bench, as well as for the minister at the altar, what 
he is and what he does, and shape for him his ideal of what 
all men ought to be and do. 

For any help these two little volumes of Mr. Fiske have 
afforded the living and may afford the yet unborn, we of Pe- 
tersham may be glad to remember that here they were writ- 
ten and that here their writer rests. 

His love of our town has descended to his children and his 
children's children. What it was to his son Ralph is happily 
said in fines on Petersham found among his manuscripts 
after his too early death, and published later in the Atlantic 
Monthly for September, 1899 — lines which, I am sure, will 
touch in some heart-strings here such sympathetic chord as 
will justify my closing by reading them : 

PETERSHAM. 

Here, where the peace of the Creator lies, 

Far from the busy mart's incessant hum, 
Where mountains in their lonely grandeur rise, 

Waiting unmoved the ages yet to come, 
Thou dwellest under broad and tranquil skies, 
A green oasis with unfailing springs, 
The undisturbed home of restful things. 

[43] 



Here, with the morn, when day is blithely breaking, 

And from the East a hemisphere of light 
Rolls westward o'er a world refreshed, awaking 

From the embrace of slumber and of night, 
Sweet comes the bonny bluebird's joyous greeting, 
While strutting Chanticleer, with tuneful throat, 
Heralds the day in shrill, exultant note. 

At sunset through thy woods I take my way, 

Threading the mazy walks and avenues, 
While from the crimson west some lingering ray 

Falls on my path, and Memory's shrine endues 
With dreamy incense of a bygone day, 

And in the thronging multitude of sylvan voices 
Sweet summer music tells us how the wood rejoices. 

Ah! can this be the Paradise? or yet 

Bright El Dorado, or Arcadia, where 
Glad fairies revel when the sun hath set, 
And songs of birds forever fill the air ? 
Where nymph or dryad, with soft eyes of jet, 
Lures the late wanderer to his final rest, 
And charms his life out on her faithless breast ? 

O thou most dear and venerated spot, 

I love thee for that thou art still as when 
In happy hours — unclouded then my lot — 
I lay within thy fern-enshrouded glen 
And felt thy loving presence. Not again 
With prayers or tears may vanished hours be bought. 
So be it, then, and here on thy green breast, 
When life is done, grant me a spot to rest. 



[44 



POEM BY FRANCIS Z. STONE: 

THE lips are dumb that should have sung to-day, 
And where he lies the lights and shadows play, 
Wreathing about the stone which bears his verse 
The golden semblance of a crown of bay. 

His tribute to the soil perchance is heard 

In whispering wind, or pipe of wandering bird, — 

What measured syllables can I rehearse 
As eloquent as his unspoken word ? 

We are not here, I think, to celebrate 
The landscape that we love, but the estate 
They left in trust to us who founded it 
As on a rock to stand inviolate. 

The past is dead ? Not so — the poet sings 
Of buried error; our achievement springs 

From those dim forms that in our background flit, 
Men intimate with elemental things. 

Obscure they lie, commingled with the soil; 
But this, at least, we know: they rest from toil, 

And on these generations they bestow 
Of their stern conquest all the battle-spoil. 

They halted Time apace upon his track 

To load with what they had his haversack, — 

Ah! far above what cursing soldiers throw 
From shattered windows at a city's sack, 

When women shriek, and ruined roof-trees blaze, 
And Slaughter stalks, red-armed, along the ways; — 

Theirs the sole salvage of the centuries lost, 
The wealth, world-dowering, of earnest days! 

[45] 



Not wealth of finished work, but work begun, 
The larger concepts that men's lives outrun, 

Pursuing which, all paths at last are crossed 
By utter dark dividing sun and sun. 

They gave us of their best; the meaner dross 
They spent, and left us richer for the loss! 

The ripe fruit falls to earth when, over-blown, 
Dead leaves before the storm unheeded toss. 

The faith that fronted forests, and perceived 
Beneath the tangled branches, myriad-leaved, 

And crowning barren hill-tops, boulder-strown, 
The future's opulent harvest, safelyjsheaved : 

That was, in truth, their faith, and not the grim 
Belief in warring fiend and cherubim, 

Through which old fears were darkly symbolized 
In gloomy sermon and desponding hymn. 

That faith be ours. Long as that faith we keep 
Nor doubt nor vain regret shall vex their sleep, 

And be that heritage more dearly prized 
Than all the gems that star the nether deep! 

They did their work, and neither more nor less 
The best may do along their track who press 

To that low inn wherein alike we lapse 
From fame, or infame, to forgetfulness. 

Why fret and fritter o'er ephemeral things? 
Endeavor such as theirs at evening brings 

No lengthening shadow of a black Perhaps, — 
Secure they sought their rest as guarded kings. 

Their lives were narrow ? Well, it may be so — 
Not where the waters spread in overflow, 

But where, constrained to deeper ways they run, 
Is gathered power to turn the wheels below. 

With rugged sense they met each exigence 

Of changing times, and proved their competence 

[46] 



Alike behind the ploughshare and the gun 
To plant the land, and stand the land's defence. 

Schooled in the statecraft of a town's affairs, 
A civic conscience unobscured was theirs, 

Knowing no middle ground 'twixt right and wrong, 
Their ballots not less earnest than their prayers. 

Clear-eyed through all the fog of party strife, 
Undeafened by the clamorous voices rife 

With menace and petition, they made strong 
Their arms to combat for the nation's life. 

They looked beyond the moment, and they saw 
Across red, trampled fields of blazing war, 

Peace rise with brow serene to bless the land 
Beneath the sway of Industry and Law. 

Not that they fought; — no people sinks so low 
But on occasion they may strike a blow 

And fall, if need be, broken sword in hand, 
In the forefront of the embattled foe. 

Not that they fought, the miracle, but why! 
These were no men whose passions, burning high, 
Burst rocket-like in flame, nor were impelled 
By martial pride to don War's panoply. 

Inherent in the old Teutonic stock 

Is valor stubborn-grained as native rock, — 

Their own the prescience which afar beheld 
A birth whose throes were merged in battle shock! 

When vaunted statesmanship was shown inept, 
When captains on their posts inglorious slept, 

Here, where a rugged soil reared rugged men, 
The covenant of 'seventy-six was kept. 

Long as their sepulchre remains a shrine, 
What need have we, or they, to seek a sign ? 
But when we turn away, apostate, then 
Give back their outworn seed-fields to the pine. 

[47] 



To-day the need is ours, with reverent tread 
To pilgrim thither with uncovered head, 

And heeding portents of impending change, 
Hold counsel with the spirit of the dead. 

Ah, friends, these innovations which we boast 
Were old when the Red Sea drowned Pharaoh's host, 
And tricked in garments modernized and strange 
Our progress is arrested by a ghost! 

Not ours, but theirs, initiative to build 

On larger lines, albeit with hands less skilled, 

The state of which men dreamed in ancient Greece 
Wherein man's destiny should be fulfilled. 

They wrought our heritage from steel and oak, 
Seeing its shape through storm and battle-smoke, — 

With sword and axe and trowel, in war and peace, 
This edifice was reared, stern stroke on stroke. 

Not census-sheets or tax-rolls make a state, 
Helvetia is not less poor than great. 

The spirit and purpose of the citizen, — 
These are the nation's arbiters of fate! 

Not armies, nor leviathans that ride 
Caparisoned in steel upon the tide, 

Nor tribute wrung from injured, sullen men, 
Are pledges that our strength will still abide ; — 

When Wealth defiles the sanctity of law, 
When demagogues incite to civil war, 

When legislation grows an auction mart, 
And thirty pieces make the senator! 

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, 

Whence cometh help." The psalmist's harp-string thrills, 

The clouds of doubt diminish and depart, 
And golden sunshine all the landscape fills. 

Back to your tents, O Israel! What avail 
Egyptian flesh-pots, and the weary tale 

[48] 



Of strawless brick, — the inutilities 
Which have no weight in God's eternal scale ? 

This is your birthright still; no claimant bars 
Your full possession, or your title mars; 
Turn from the multitude's futilities 
That transient are as gnats beneath the stars! 

A little while, and what will matter then 
The gross activities of froward men, 

Who pyramid their perishable spoil 
And are, at once, as they had never been ? 

Here, on the hills, are permanence and peace, 
And neighborhood, and sanctified increase, — 

Immutabilities of sun and soil 
For world-worn seekers of the golden fleece. 

Here, on the heights, an incense fresh ascends 
From nature's altar, where the sweet-fern bends; 

Clean winds sweep large horizons, and the blue 
With the world's outer rampart softly blends; 

This watch-tower of the faith, set on a hill, 
Has yet, perchance, a purpose to fulfil — 

As when, of old, men looked to it, and knew 
New England kept the nation's conscience still. 



[49 



ADDRESS BY MR. ABIATHAR BLANCHARD, A NATIVE 
OF PETERSHAM: 

YOU will permit me to express my pleasure in being 
present on this occasion, commemorative of the one 
hundred and fiftieth anniversary of my native town. 
I am glad to be here, and, in saying so, I surely voice the 
feeling of the inhabitants of Petersham, as well as of others 
who, either once identified with the town or tracing their 
ancestry here, have returned to join in this celebration. 

We have always heard a good deal about patriotism. Some- 
times we may have heard too much, especially when that 
quality has been exalted above the moral law, though I would 
be the last to decry a cardinal civic virtue. But there is a sen- 
timent, of the very essence of patriotism, of which there is 
little danger that we shall have too much. Rather is the tend- 
ency in these days the other way. The object of this sen- 
timent is not the nation, or the state, but the town in which 
we live. Here is our home, with its family ties. Here are our 
neighbors and immediate circle of friends. Here are the lo- 
cal institutions, municipal, educational, and religious, that 
come close to our every-day and even our inmost life. Thus 
one town takes precedence of all others. It appeals directly 
and continually to our public spirit. Its well-being we cher- 
ish. To its honor and reputation we are almost as sensitive 
as to our own. The law allows to each citizen one domicile, 
but there are many of us who owe a sort of divided allegiance. 
There is the town of our nativity and the town of our adop- 
tion. There is the home where we were born and nurtured 
and the home that we established for ourselves in later life. 
However much the latter may command our duty and engross 

[50] 



our thought, there is that in the former which will never suf- 
fer it to be forgotten. Of the strength of that primal allegiance 
the gathering to-day is a witness. 

Old Petersham, enthroned on her picturesque hills in the 
heart of our beloved Commonwealth of Massachusetts! 
" Here where the peace of the Creator lies"! Beautiful in her 
natural aspect, with a "charm of landscape and of sky" of 
which even the stranger owns the spell! What, then, does it 
mean to us who first opened our eyes upon these scenes, pass- 
ing here the impressionable years of childhood and growing 
up to manhood and womanhood ? What fairer setting could 
we wish for the annals and traditions of our ancestors ? It 
was a profound truth uttered by the old classic, Humani 
nihil alienum (nothing is foreign to me). It is humanity that 
interests us, and it is the human element that to us invests 
these familar scenes with an especial attraction and signifi- 
cance. 

The real Petersham is to be found in people we have known 
here, those whom we are glad to greet on this occasion, others 
absent in body but present in spirit, and the " cloud of wit- 
nesses" whom memory summons from the past. They are 
the ones who have consecrated this soil and made it the lode- 
stone that brings to it to-day our willing feet. 

I have made an allusion to patriotism. It was here fifty 
years ago that I received my first impression of the American 
flag. In anticipation of the one-hundredth anniversary of 
the incorporation of the town, a "liberty-pole" had been 
erected on Petersham Common. On this the banner of the 
republic was raised and its streaming folds flung to the free 
air of heaven. An impressive sight under any conditions! 
To my child's vision that flag was " like a meteor in the sky," 
and the impression made by that first flag-raising stands out 
unique from all others, vivid and undimmed by the years. 

But we have made history since that natal day. Seven 
years later there was another display of the flag on Peters- 
ham streets — not one flag, but many. I recall a Sabbath 
morning in May, 1861. Before each house and strung across 

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the street were flags in every variety. The spectacle meant 
something, for in those early days of the War of the Rebel- 
lion the inquiry went around whether this man, that, or the 
other was loyal to the Union. To this inquiry the display of 
the flag was deemed a sufficient answer, and such it proved 
in the event. Through the four years of that terrible war 
Petersham, in common with her sister towns, stood staunch 
and loyal, and we to-day are proud of her record. Of what 
that conflict meant to this town the Memorial Building that 
fronts the village green will tell something to coming gener- 
ations. The same service will be performed by memorial 
addresses and records of various kinds, but the personal note 
evoked at the time by the events themselves can never be en- 
tirely reproduced. The way to learn history is to live when 
it is being made. That is the task the real historian sets for 
himself. Those of us who were old enough to "take in" the 
events of the Civil War learned its history to some purpose. 
In that momentous era we could say, with deep feeling of 
its truth, 

"We are living, we are living 

In a grand and awful time, 
In an age on ages telling; 

To be living is sublime." 

Lowell says in one of his addresses, " It was a benediction 
to have lived in the same age with Abraham Lincoln." So 
much may be said, and more. It was also a benediction and 
an inspiration to have known personally so many of the men 
who, sacrificing their business interests and personal com- 
fort, and severing the dearest ties, risked their lives for their 
country. In a small town like Petersham it was not possible 
to raise whole companies, and so these men, enlisting at dif- 
ferent times, were to be found in different commands and in 
all branches of the service. All honor to them, wherever 
they were ! Their names recur to me as I speak, as they will 
to many in this audience. They can never be forgotten. It 
is with no invidious distinction, then, that I mention partic- 

[52] 



ularly the company of men who went from this town and 
Barre, enlisting in the summer of 1862. This was the dark- 
est period of the war. McClellan had been baffled before 
Richmond, our armies had suffered defeat in the battles be- 
fore the national capitol, and the rebels later crossed the Po- 
tomoc into Maryland. It was at this stage of the war that 
Company F of the Fifty-third Regiment was recruited. It 
was no holiday pastime for which these men enlisted, but the 
grim business of war. As I look upon the little band of sur- 
vivors to-day I think of Webster's apostrophe to the survi- 
ving soldiers of the Revolution, for I see before me men equally 
worthy of honor. There is a pleasure mingled with sadness 
as I look into your faces. Other faces as familiar as yours 
come before me, the beloved comrades who marched and 
battled and some of whom fell by your side, and in the van 
your gallant commander, that irreproachable gentleman, 
our Bayard, that prince among men, Captain Mudge. 

But what of the future ? However " secure the past" may 
be, time does not stop in his course. There is a future of 
some kind for our ancestral town. A contrary supposition 
would throw a pall over the present exercises. What shall 
that future bring ? 

There are some things we would fain hope for in the Pe- 
tersham that is to be. One is that she may take up into her 
municipal, social, and religious life much of the spirit of the 
past; that some scions of the old stock may continue to live 
here and influence her destinies. That great changes are go- 
ing on in the lineage of the people who live here is not to be 
doubted. We are also painfully aware that in recent years 
there have been many signs of a decaying prosperity. From 
a certain point of vantage the other day I marked eight 
abandoned farms. Those hearthstones have grown cold, 
and the houses that in my easy recollection were centres of 
life are either falling to ruin or have entirely disappeared. I 
look for a turn in the tide, to a time when it will be profitable 
to farm here in the hill towns of New England, when these 
abandoned acres will be reclaimed and new and better houses 

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rise in the place of the old. Economic changes are taking 
place in that direction, and people of a different ancestry 
from ours are finding it out. These people have in them 
the making of good citizens, and everything should be done 
to make them good citizens. 

The spirit of old Petersham, the spirit of this occasion, 
should be projected into the future. What is the mission of 
your public library, with its treasures of literature and other 
means of ministration to the higher life of the community? 
What is the mission of the three churches that have stood 
here for so long ? May they still continue to " point their 
spires of faith to heaven ; ' ' for there is work enough for them 
and similar organizations to do, a work that cannot be left 
unperformed without peril to the town and to the State. Again, 
there is the school. Had I the time I would stop to eulogize 
the traditional and actual little red schoolhouse of my recol- 
lection, and the many superior teachers who have held sway 
in those humble institutions. How much we owe to them! 
But in my vision of the future, and in accord with the spirit 
of the age, I see not many little schoolhouses scattered over 
the landscape, but a large, thoroughly appointed central 
building with a trained corps of instructors putting into 
practice the most approved ideas in education. But the 
work should not stop with the ordinary English branches. 
There should be the fullest opportunity for high-school stud- 
ies that fit for life, and also, for those who desire it, a prepa- 
ration for the great colleges and universities of the country. 
I am sure that there are many here who can remember the 
larger vision and opportunity that came to them when Prin- 
ciples Sprague, Dudley, Peabody, and Leonard, with able 
assistants, conducted in successive years the Petersham Clas- 
sical High School; others will recall with similar feelings an 
institution of larger scope, the Highland Institute, with its 
corps of accomplished teachers, which flourished here for 
several years. Let the young people, our successors here, 
have better advantages still; for the world moves on. It is 
for their good and the good of the town. The declared pol- 

[54] 



icy of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is to give every 
child within its borders a chance for an education, including 
the higher education. This policy of the State should be met 
by the towns much more than half way, for upon its universal 
prevalence depend not only the highest welfare of the towns 
themselves, but also the stability of the commonwealth and 
the great republic. 

Our friendly forecast, then, for the ancestral town whose 
anniversary we commemorate to-day would place her well 
within the scope and tendency of the highest civilization, 
within easy reach of the best things of life, to which, in the 
future as in the past, she should make no unworthy contri- 
bution. 



POEM BY REV. MR. TOWER, ALSO A NATIVE OF 
THE TOWN: 

" TT THAT 'S hallowed ground?" the poet asks, 
VV And answers as he may, 
In words of glowing eloquence, 

As is the poet's way. 
But Nature speaks in louder tones, 

Prosaic though they be, 
And cries, "The spot where life was young 

Is hallowed ground to me." 
And so from distant haunts of men, 

Where'er their dwellings be, 
Thy sons and daughters, Petersham, 

With fond hearts turn to thee. 
They view thee with enchanted eye; 

To their anointed gaze 
A light falls on thee from a sky 

Unseen since childhood days. 
To them (although it be not theirs 

A reason to assign) 
No suns so bright, no fields so green, 

No skies so blue, as thine! 
No zephyrs soft as those that stir 

Thy woods as day declines; 

[55] 



No music like thy tinkling brooks 
Or like thy murmuring pines! 

What pictures from the vanished years 

Through memory's chambers throng! 
The swallow twittering from the eaves, 

The bluebird's early song! 
The squirrel chattering in the elm, 

The hawk's shriek from the sky, 
The lonely notes of whippoorwill, 

The quail's foreboding cry, 
The woodbird's weird but tuneful song 

Deep in the everglade, 
Heard oftenest as the night drew on 

With ever deepening shade; 
The wondrous sound by day or night 

Of wild fowl on the wing, 
Unresting in their Northern flight, 

The harbingers of spring; 
The copse with wild fruits freighted rare 

On vine and bush and ground ; — 
No fairer sight to childhood's eye 

Can through the earth be found! 

And e'en the man whose travelled eye 

Has glanced o'er many lands, 
W T hose feet have trod the mountain-tops 

Or crossed the desert sands, 
But stands at length upon these heights 

And views the prospect round 
From where the central hamlet stands 

To yon horizon's bound, 
And sees thy meads, thy clustered hills, 

Thy vales and woods between, 
To where Wachusett lifts his head 

Above his pastures green; 
To where Monadnock rears his bulk 

Up toward the Northern star; 
To where New Salem's distant spires 

Gleam in the west afar; 

r 56 1 



To where bold Hoosac towers aloft 

Full sixty miles away 
And marshals all his vassal peaks 

In one sublime array; 
Where sun-lit clouds in circling groups 

On misty slopes are driven, 
And tier on tier the ranges rise 

Like giant steps to heaven. 
Who views this scene when morning dews 

Flash rainbows in the sun, 
Or when the western mountains blaze 

Before the day is done; 
Who views it clothed in summer's sheen, 

A glory dazzling sight, 
Or wrapt in winter's spotless robe, 

A glory scarce less bright; 
Can never say, with soul unstained, 

That Beauty dwells not here 
As surely as on Alpine height 

Or Scotia's storied mere! 
In Nature's temple he who bends 

With reverence sincere 
Seeks vainly a more sacred shrine 

Than that awaits him here; 
For Nature here with lavish hand 

Has all her arts combined 
To fire the fancy, thrill the soul, 

And captivate the mind. 

But other scenes from memory's store 

Arise upon my view, 
Which stir the inmost, deepest thought 

As not e'en these can do. 
I see no stately mansions rise 

To line the lengthening street 
Whose costly pavements, night and day, 

Are beat by hurrying feet; 
I see no mammoth marts of trade; 

I hear no engines roar 

[57] 



Amid the din of crowded shops 

Whence streams of wealth outpour; 
I see no lordly palaces, 

No tall cathedral spires, 
No gay-decked throng on pleasure bent 

With all that heart desires; 
As memory's magic hand unrolls 

The scroll of bygone years 
A sight of deeper meaning far 

To my tranced eye appears. 
I see the source, the primal source, 

Whence all those splendors come; 
I see the Nation's final hope, 

I see the Country Home. 
A Home indeed! Not a mere lodge 

To pass the night away, 
While the heart's interest wanders far 

In other scenes to stray; 
But Home, the center of the soul, 

An anchor and a stay, 
A source of strength that shall not fail 

To life's remotest day. 

What though the stern demands of toil 

Fill full the fleeting hours, 
And tasks by stubborn nature set 

Tax all the vital powers ? 
Those powers expand and stronger grow 

"The strenuous life" to try; 
No toil so good for brawn and brain 

As neath the open sky. 
Swift speeds the blood through healthy veins; 

And with their minds aglow, 
The toilers, seeking honest gains, 

In virtue also grow. 
And thus the hand that held the plow 

And drew the furrow straight 
Prevails to carve a fortune out 

When come to man's estate. 

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And so thy children, Petersham, 

Have made thy merit known 
In circles wide, both near and far, 

As passing years have flown. 
With courage high they have gone forth 

In all the walks of life, 
And in the world's broad battlefield 

Proved victors in the strife. 
The marts of commerce and of trade 

Have claimed full many a son, 
And large successes oft have told 

Of service ably done. 
In arts mechanic some have thrived, 

With skillful hand and brain; 
And some aspiring have not failed 

TV inventor's meed to gain. 
The teacher's high vocation some 

Have plied, and plied it well, 
And blessings rich have spread abroad, 

Far more than words can tell. 
The bar and public halls of state 

Have fitly claimed a share, 
Nor lacked the praise of duty done, 

And reputation fair. 
And some by lofty purpose moved 

The sacred desk have filled, 
And with the oracles of Heaven 

The listening people thrilled; 
Premising it were joy supreme 

To do the works of love 
And leave all questions of award 

To be adjudged above. 
And some by patriot ardor fired 

To save the nation's life 
Exchanged the quiet joys of home 

For scenes of bloody strife. 
On distant fields, neath Southern skies, 

Where issues vast were tried, 
'Mid rifle-shot and cannon's roar 

They nobly fought and died. 

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Here halts our verse; nor tongue nor pen 

Nor thought can farther go! 
What is the object, what the end 

Of all things here below ? 
What save that men upright and true, 

Such as were first designed, 
Should rise in manhood's glorious strength 

And live to bless mankind ? 
Such have been here; as freshening streams 

From fountains in the hill 
Flow down till verdure, growth, and bloom 

The vales and meadows fill; 
So from thy dwellings, Petersham, 

These streams of life have flowed 
To which, with others like them, all 

Our nation boasts is owed. 
In all the wealth, prosperity, 

And greatness which combine 
To raise our land all lands above, 

A generous share is thine. 
Long be it so! and never may 

Thy children love thee less! 
And may the Author of all good 

Thy hills and valleys bless! 



[60] 



MAY 31 1912 



